(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

How do I uninstall Puppy Linux and go back to XP?

I have the Windows XP CD and disks and stuff.

When I tried the system recovery disk, it said
"Failed to create user paritition."

Any help?

If you did a type 2 installation and allowed Puppy to take over your entire hard drive, which it sounds like, then you need to partition the hard drive, so Windows can see it again. Windows can't see Linux partitions and thinks that you have no hard drive space to partition.

If you know what hard drive is in the system, you can download a utility to format the drive from the manufacturer. Most have a utility that can be run from two floppy disks. Of course, this assumes that you have another computer to download the utility.

You can get a Windows boot disk and use fdisk to format the drive.

You should be able to use the Linux fdisk utility to do the same.

Also, Knoppix and Mepis have a utility called qtparted that can do the job.

When you say a recovery disk, is this a Dell or Gateway system?

PartitionMagic recovery disks can also do this for you.

Let us know what your situation is.

Which boot disk should I use?
I tried this before in MEPIS, and it still gave me the "Failed to create user parition".

Would it matter if the OLD Hard-drive had windows XP on it, and then I had to exchange it out for an older one that had windows 98 (this one's in my PC right now) but i formatted it and put puppy linux, because whenever I tried to run XP system recovery disks for some reason it partitioned the drive as a windows 95 FAT13 (or something like that) parition.

For some reason though, it keeps on saying "Failed to create user parition"

And I want my windows back so bad =(

I should have clarified, that qtparted is not the best. It is not without problems. It also does not handle NTFS well at all.

The easiest thing to do is to format it as fat32, then let the windows XP disk do the work.

Sometimes the drive gets corrupted using too many utilities, so that it seems unrecoverable.

I have found, if you know what drive make that you have, the manufacturer's utility will do the job well. They often will also ask what OS you will be installing, to set up the drive "ready" for windows whatever.

I just had to wipe my secondary drive, as a SuSE caused the drive to be unreadable by PartitionMagic. There were some issues with some distros drive partitioning tools making valid ext2 or ext3 partitons next to NTFS volumes. This has been fixed. Yes, it had to do with kernel 2.6!

What parition managers do you suggest? If im going to install Windows XP Home, what do I format it to? Where can I find the utility?

Boot your XP disk up and do a new install, when it comes to the partition section delete and create the partitions you require.
Format the win partition as NTFS if you want security and finish the install.

It seems to skip all of that and go straight to "Finizling the partition" and then comes up with an error.

Try running "fixmbr" from the XP installation disc. That saved my bacon once. If I remember right, it overwrote the MBR with a standard Windows version.

You could always boot the Puppy live CD 1.0.3 take the no. 2 option and from the command line run fdisk and delete all partitions then reboot XP.

But I don't want to loose my puppy *whimpers*
Don't let the grinder eat him.

flamesarge, do you have XP on the system now, or is this a fresh installation that you want to do? It sounded to me that you wanted to do a fresh installation of XP and that it was not currently on your system.

In other words, do you just have Puppy on an ext2 partiton (type 2 installation) and it occupies your total hard drive, or do you have more than one partition on the drive (Puppy gave you more than one option of a partiton to install to)?

If you have XP already on the system, you can recover the MBR, as suggested, by getting into the recovery console using the XP disk and fix the MBR so Windows will boot. But if this were the case, you can use grub, if it is installed to boot XP without recovering the MBR, with a little manipulation.

If the total drive is occupied by Puppy on a Linux partition, and it is the only drive in the system, XP will freak out. It can't see the partition and thinks there is no available space on the drive to format.

If Puppy occupies everything, XP needs to be installed first, then you can resize the drive to make room for a type 2 install.

If Puppy occupies the entire hard drive, then you can use Ian's suggestion to delete the partition, then try to install XP.

If all this is confusing, then try the utility that your hard drive manufacturer has. The one that you use depends on what make hard drive that you have on the system.

Of course no matter what you do, you need a way to boot Puppy. The easiest thing to do, would be to wipe the partiton, install XP, then make room for Puppy and do a Puppy installation.

Perhaps someone has a better way to do this. Clarify exactly what your situation is and then everyone can suggest a logical solution.

Thanks danleff, I'm putting a link to your post in the Beginners index, under HD install I think.

Ok, I have MEPIS linux on my OLD HARD DRIVE (A,let's call it.) A was in my computer origionally, but then it some how got coruppted and or died.
Then I just recently replaced it with Harddrive B, B had windows 98 on it, and I wanted to install Windows XP on HD B.
But when i put in the disk it kept on coming up with 'failed to create user partition'.

And for some reason it kept on creating a windows 95 partition.

It's still doing this even after puppy is installed.

It appears that your problem is unrelated to Puppy so the best advice I can give you is to scrap everything and start from scratch.

If you have the 1.0.3 live Puppy CD boot it up taking the no 2 option and then using fdisk or cfdisk delete all partitions.

Alternatively you could use a Windows startup floppy and using fdisk delete all partitions.

Boot from your XP disk, create two partitions and format the first one as NTFS.

Install XP to the first partition.

Boot Puppy with the 2 option and using fdisk rename the second partition as 83 a Linux native partition. Exit fdisk and use the mkfs command format the second partition as ext2 then using the install wizard install Puppy.

You can either use the boot floppy, install Grub or make a Grub boot CD to boot both Puppy and Windows.

There is also the distinct possibility that your hard drive has damaged sectors.

If you get the make and model of the harddrive and go to the manufacturers website, there is usually some downloadable utilities for remapping the hard drive, flagging bad sectors, fixing problems and re-initialising the disk with a low level format.
If the HD is dying then it will only fend off the inevitable, but it's certainly worth a try

<<Edit : just noticed that someone has already mentioned doing this - sorry for the repetition. Did anyone mention swapping the connecting ribbon cable over? sometimes an unreliable hard disk is a result of poor data transfer and a new cable sorts it out. >>

Also, when you sort things out could you please post a response here so we know that your issue has been resolved.
Thanks.

There is something that I may have overlooked.

Is this a Dell or Gateway system?

When you spoke about the systen recovery disk in your first post, did you mean a full version Windows XP installation disk, or a recovery disk from say Gateway or Dell? This would explain a few things. Recovery disks replace everything on the target hard drive. If it does not find enough space, or encounters partitions that it does not understand, such as a Linux partition....

What's missing from your posts, is a description or your system/hardware.

If this is not the case, some other points apply.

When you start switching out drives, you need to make sure that the drives are jumpered correctly. Some drives have a "single" jumper setting that means that you have one drive in the system only.

In order to have two or more drives in the system, you must change that designation. If your master drive is such a drive, you need to change the jumper settings to designate master, slave for the two drives.

One way to see this clearly, is to look in the bios and see if both drives are recognized.

Perhaps you can clarify these points, which will help a lot.

If this is not a Dell or Gateway system, we need to know what manufacturer's utility to use, so, we need to know what make hard drive that you are targeting. Windows XP wants to be the first OS on the system. So, no matter what way you cut it, XP needs to be the the first OS on your master drive to make this process as easy as possible.